Shelby Street sidewalk “fix”
Posted by Curt Ailes in Bicycling, Pedestrian, Transit on Jul 29th, 2011 | 22 comments
Well, “the fix is in” as the popular saying goes. As previously reported here on Urban Indy, and in what caused a huge stink, a utility pole planted directly in the middle of a new sidewalk seemed like a huge missed opportunity to improve a stretch of Shelby Street that is currently being subjected to the construction of Indianapolis’ first on street cycle track. A reader had sent along photos of the offending utility pole which I was able to get weigh in from Indy DPW that they were going to “fix” this.
Well, as you can see they have “fixed” the issue for...
First design views of the Broad Ripple Parking Garage
Posted by Curt Ailes in Neighborhoods on Jul 25th, 2011 | 47 comments
Last week, a presentation was held at the Indianapolis Art Center in Broad Ripple. At the meeting, the winning team displayed their first pass of the design of the garage. I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a copy of the .pdf (click here to open). I have included a couple of screen shots here to show the visually appealing aspects of the garage. Reading through the summary, I get the impression that these folks WANT to design a structure that fits into the context of the village. They do this by summarizing the different built forms currently present in the village, and how the new mixed use...
IURC approves water lease; $425m for infrastructure
Posted by Curt Ailes in Transit on Jul 21st, 2011 | 16 comments
On July 13th, 2011, the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission approved the lease of the water utility to Citizen’s Energy. While this has been debated vigorously over the past year and a half locally, what it means is that when it goes through, over $425 million will become available to put towards Rebuild Indy; a program that I have given praise to as well as been highly critical of.
The crux of why I have been critical, is that none of this money has thus far been diverted, at least in principal, to addressing our horrendous transit situation. Indeed, Indyconnect has done much to address this...
100 Years, 100 Parks
Posted by Kevin Kastner in Neighborhoods on Jul 20th, 2011 | 4 comments
My wife has embarked on the 100 years, 100 parks challenge, which is a similar to a city-wide scavenger hunt. The great thing about this challenge is it enables us to travel to areas of the city which we are unfamiliar with. Last night, we had to answer a question at Clayton & LaSalle Park, located in the Twin Aire neighborhood (props to the naplab map displayed on my office wall). Neither of us had even heard of this park, so we were taken aback by the fact that it was quite popular. I’m guessing there were around 100 people in this small park located on 2 neighborhood...
Shelby Street Bike Track – Update 1
Posted by Curt Ailes in Bicycling, Pedestrian on Jul 19th, 2011 | 13 comments
Alright folks, here is your first photo update from me regarding the Shelby Street bike track. Along with IndyCog, we seem to be the only people really charting the progress of this project. I find that amazing since I believe this project will change the way local cyclists think about future bicycle infrastructure. I’ve appluaded the project (here) and also beaten up DPW over the project (here). This post, is the first in what I hope will be a few picture posts charting the progress of Indy’s first on street bike...
